Center for Political Studies
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan
P.O. Box 1248
Ann Arbor, MI
48106-1248

Voice: (734) 763-1348
Fax: (734) 764-3341

Title
The Consequences of Party System Inflation

PI
Ken Kollman

Co-PI
Allen Hicken

Direct Source
National Science Foundation

Abstract
The proposed project will focus on the study of political party systems, with an emphasis on the degree to which parties are national in scope or primarily local or regional. Kollman and Hicken plan to conduct original research on the causes and consequences of nationalized party systems, and in the meantime to create a valuable date archive of election results from a variety of countries. Their theoretical research will include the development of rigorous theoretical models that can offer insights into the process of party formation and party aggregation across electoral districts. They will collect and analyze constituency-level election data from Canada, Great Britain, India, the United States, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Thailand, Philippines, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Japan, Austria, South Korea, and perhaps more countries, The archive will be developed and maintained for use by researchers with access to the Web.